lf painted the quaint constellations in
the ceiling over the altar. At the Pazzi chapel we shall find similar
architecture; but there extraneous colour was allowed to come in. Here
such reliefs as were admitted are white too.

The tomb under the great marble and porphyry table in the centre is
that of Giovanni di Bicci, the father, and Piccarda, the mother, of
Cosimo Pater, and is usually attributed to Buggiano, the adopted son
of Brunelleschi, but other authorities give it either to Donatello
alone or to Donatello with Michelozzo: both from the evidence of
the design and because it is unlikely that Cosimo would ask any one
else than one of these two friends of his to carry out a commission
so near his heart. The table is part of the scheme and not a chance
covering. I think the porphyry centre ought to be movable, so that
the beautiful flying figures on the sarcophagus could be seen. But
Donatello's most striking achievement here is the bronze doors, which
are at once so simple and so strong and so surprising by the activity
of the virile and spirited holy men, all converting each other, thereon
depicted. These doors could not well be more different from Ghiberti's,
in the casting of which Donatello assisted; those in such high relief,
these so low; those so fluid and placid, and these so vigorous.

Donatello presides over this room (under Brunelleschi). The vivacious,
speaking terra-cotta bust of the young S. Lorenzo on the altar is
his; the altar railing is probably his; the frieze of terra-cotta
cherubs may be his; the four low reliefs in the spandrels, which it
is so difficult to discern but which photographs prove to be wonderful
scenes in the life of S. John the Evangelist--so like, as one peers up
at them, plastic Piranesis, with their fine masonry--are his. The other
reliefs are Donatello's too; but the lavabo in the inner sacristy is
Verrocchio's, and Verrocchio's tomb of Piero can never be overlooked
even amid such a wealth of the greater master's work.

From this fascinating room--fascinating both in itself and in its
possessions--we pass, after distributing the necessary largesse to
the sacristan, to a turnstile which admits, on payment of a lira,
to the Chapel of the Princes and to Michelangelo's sacristy. Here is
contrast, indeed: the sacristy, austere and classic, and the chapel
a very exhibition building of floridity and coloured ornateness,
dating from the seventeenth century and not finished yet. In